Bean soup

- old, traditional recipe - cooked with dry beans - with the addition of broth or water

• Preparation time: 30 minutes Soup cooking time: 1 hour 10 minutes Dry bean soaking time: 10 hours
• Number of servings: 2500 ml soup - 2.5 kg
• Energy value 118 kcal
• Carbohydrates 11 g
• Including sugars 1 g
• Protein 5 g
• Fat 6 g
• Diet: gluten-free, low-sugar.
• 220 g of dry Piękny Jaś beans
• 1 liter of vegetable broth or water
• 2 allspice grains
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 medium potatoes - 400 g
• 2 small carrots - 150 g
• 200 g smoked bacon without skin
• 200 g of good smoked sausage
• 1 large onion - up to 200 g
• a flat spoon of sweet paprika
• 1/4 teaspoon of pepper and half a teaspoon of salt
• a spoonful of marjoram
• 2 tablespoons of tomato paste

Bean soup

My glass holds 250 ml. The vegetables were weighed before peeling, and I arranged the ingredients in the order they were added to the soup. Calories were calculated based on the ingredients I used. This is only an estimate, as even the sausage you use may have 100 kcal more or less than the sausage I used. Start preparing the bean soup the day before. It's best to soak the beans the evening before, so you can start cooking the next morning. I love making such filling and rich soups. I like it when the pot is full of delicious vegetables and meat. Bean soup is one of those soups where I have a hard time resisting a second helping. Is that the same for you?

Bean soup

The most important thing is good-quality, dry Jack beans. Look for small beans in the store, no longer than 2 cm. The beans need to be soaked first. Prepare a large bowl – glass or ceramic. Add a full cup of beans, which is 200 grams of dry beans, and cover with cold water. The water should extend up to 10 cm above the beans. The beans will swell and absorb most of the water in the bowl. If you add too little water, you can add more at any time. However, if you leave the beans overnight, you may find that they've run out of water in the morning, and the remaining beans will have wrinkled skins/shells. I recommend soaking the beans for at least 10 hours. It's best to soak them in the evening and leave them there until morning. Store the bowl in a cupboard, cellar, or storage room for this time.

After at least 10 hours of soaking, you can drain the remaining water from the beans. You'll immediately notice that the beans have swelled and absorbed most of the water from the bowl.

Rinse the beans and place them in a pot with a capacity of about 4 liters. Add at least one liter of homemade vegetable or chicken stock to the beans. Bean soup cooked in one liter of liquid will be thick. If you prefer a thinner soup, add another cup of stock.

I've made bean soup without broth, just with water, and it turned out great. Sometimes I'll thaw 500 ml of vegetable broth and top it up with water. The soup will have a rich flavor because you'll also add smoked bacon and sausage. Add two bay leaves and two allspice berries to the pot. Cover the pot with a lid and bring the soup to a boil. When the bean soup begins to boil, reduce the heat just enough so that the soup is just shimmering. Cover and simmer for 35 minutes.

While the beans are cooking in the broth, you can start preparing the remaining ingredients. After 35 minutes, add the peeled and finely diced potatoes and carrots to the pot. Cover and simmer the soup in the same manner for another 20-25 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender. The carrots will likely need to cook longer than the potatoes, so the cooking time will be closer to 25 minutes.

The bean soup is simmering, so it's time for the bacon and onion. Dice the raw smoked bacon or cooked smoked bacon without the skin into small cubes. Add it to the still-cold pan and allow the fat to gradually render and the bacon to brown. Stir the bacon occasionally with a wooden spoon.

Peel and finely chop the onion. Add it to the bacon only after most of the fat has rendered. When buying bacon for bean soup, feel free to use the fatty pieces. If you don't have dried and smoked sausage and plan to add, for example, Silesian sausage, sauté it in a pan with the onion. Sauté for up to 15 minutes, until the onion is translucent and golden brown.

Once the vegetables in the pot are soft, add the entire contents of the pan, along with the onion and bacon. Add the sausage cut into half-slices (if you have smoked and dried sausage, do not pan-fry this type of sausage first).

Add a level tablespoon of sweet paprika or smoked paprika, 1/4 teaspoon of pepper, and ½ teaspoon of salt. Stir the soup and simmer, covered, for five to ten minutes. At this point, you can stop cooking the bean soup.

However, I always add a tablespoon of marjoram and two tablespoons of tomato paste at the end. The bean soup is even better... definitely try it.

If you like Hungarian-style dishes, then both.

You will like baked beans and my bean soup.

Also check out my recipe for pea soup with smoked bacon.

Enjoy your meal.